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Electric vehicles are becoming more widely available, and better at what they offer.\u00a0 But potential consumers of EVs have a checked enthusiasm towards going out and buying one; and for good reason.\u00a0 The main inquiries lie around how pricey a new EV is to purchase, their fire risk, crash safety risk, their range between top ups being rather poor and subsequent charging times way too long, the lack of charging stations, as well as their candid hidden impact on our environment which is actually very big.<\/p>\n
EVs require big, powerful rechargeable batteries that use lead\u2013acid (“flooded”, deep-cycle, and VRLA), NiCd, nickel\u2013metal hydride, lithium-ion, Li-ion polymer, and, less commonly, zinc\u2013air, sodium nickel chloride in their design.\u00a0 It is worth noting that these expensive EV batteries require a bigger carbon footprint in their production and use a finite resource to make them.\u00a0 Then there is the environmental cost of battery disposal when the spent battery needs replacing.\u00a0 So, are we any better off driving EVs?\u00a0 The answer would have to be no.<\/p>\n
Actually, no vehicle driven on our road can be classed as purely \u201cgreen\u201d or \u201cenvironmentally friendly\u201d for people and their environment.\u00a0 The fact is whatever car we choose, buy and drive; it will have some ecological impact.\u00a0 Perhaps the best way of describing this would be that all vehicles impact on our environment and pollute, while other vehicles do so a lot more, and then some do so a bit less.\u00a0 It is quite false to suggest that EVs are environmentally friendly.<\/p>\n
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That brings me to the question: What is the most environmentally friendly vehicle?\u00a0 There are some major car manufacturers that are pushing forward with hydrogen power.\u00a0 A hydrogen driven car is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that produces the electricity that the electric car engines need.\u00a0 Hydrogen vehicles only take five minutes to top-up, and provide much better range.\u00a0 The only emissions are water, because inside the fuel cell hydrogen reacts with oxygen to produce water as a discharge.\u00a0 So, hydrogen vehicles don\u2019t emit pollutants.\u00a0 Hydrogen can be produced from fossil fuels and natural gas, but it can also be produced from renewable energy sources by way of electrolysis.<\/p>\n
I think hydrogen is the best way forward, and the Hyundai Nexo is the first vehicle to arrive in Australia that\u2019s available for the Australian government and business fleets to use.\u00a0 The reason for its limited availability is simply because Australia doesn\u2019t have an organised hydrogen refuel station network set up, as yet.\u00a0 But I can see this changing to it becoming common place on all fuel station forecourts across Australia.<\/p>\n